Matchdotcom For Dummies and Retired Bunnies

 The current project I’m working on is a book/novel titled Matchdotcom for Dummies (and Retired Bunnies) by Suzanne Nielsen AKA Pearl Mercer/Quixote_isms.  The premise is to focus on 30 days in the life of a middle-aged woman revisiting the idea of dating.  It will consist of five chapters (110 pages)—

 1. The Genesis and Evolution of the Profile for Sale

 2. The 30-Day Diary: A Step-by-Step Approach to Loss of Appetite

 3. A Lesson in Constant Humility

4. By Gosh, I am Good Enough, Smart Enough and Trashy Looking to boot

5. Middle Aged Relationships for Dummies and Aging Bunnies: The Return to a Healthy Appetite.

 Synopsis- The Genesis of this project began after a therapy session with my estranged husband.  Although we’ve lived apart for 16 months (as of March, 2009), we attend weekly therapy sessions with Stan, our psychologist.  Stan looks like an elf and recently gave me two tiger-eye marbles to ease my migraines.  I think I continue therapy because of Stan.  His socks always match his shirts and he has a jack-o-lantern permanently displayed on his desk behind his stained teapot.  At our last session Stan was wearing a peach button down oxford and ecru socks.  I took this as a sign to move on.  I mentioned during that session to Stan (and my fourth husband) that I intended to join Match.com, the dating service that services 20,000 new members daily.  Stan’s elf ears wiggled; my fourth husband said, “Bun (that’s my pet name), I think you could meet some really good friends doing so.”  Although this was not the response I’d intended, I recognized then and there that I was, in fact, 52 years OLD.  My looks had waved goodbye along with my figure; my tattoos were starting to sag.  Thank god I could still read and write, although my eyes are no longer 20/20.  Upon recognition that my life was half over and that Stan had let me down, just like most all of the other men I’ve encountered, I joined Match.com on Valentine’s Day, 2009. This novel is a (somewhat) fictionalized account of my membership.  Although intended to poke fun at myself and those middle-aged sag-ers like me, both men and women, it is also an account of what America’s idea of couple ship has morphed into: a sales gimmick of an ever evolving profile of who we are, and who we intend to be when we grow up.

East of the River

Anna DiBella’s Review of East of the River
Author: Suzanne Nielsen
Published: January, 2006
So’ham Books, Haryana, India
Website: http://www.sohambooks.tk

For a poet who is open and straightforward, yet private, as she herself tells us in “Bound, ‘The ties that bind/the binds that tie,’” her poetry becomes a medium for being. In East of the River, Suzanne Nielsen shares her personal journey of “mirrors and shadows.” Her poems fill me with fire. As I read them I escape the ashes, but, without question, continue to experience a meltdown.

You cannot help but be touched profoundly by those things which move her, stun her, leave her bereft or questioning, either her own or her core life of another. The last lines of her poems carry metaphoric weight: “all of a sudden/honk honking stirs me back/ to turning right/or wrong/attempting to find submersion.” In “1015 Fifth Street: ‘This house isn’t the way I remember it/Does that count for something?’” In another piece: “I never sold tickets/to my own sideshow/attraction.”

Suzanne’s poems are indescribably honest. You will never forget them. You will pulsate with remembrance of those characters she has created or known and recreated: her mother, Kathleen, her aunt…you will come to know Suzanne. Even when she is hiding, she is there, right there.

Anna DiBella, President of Pen Women, author of Half Moons & Falling Stars

Sampling from EOTR

1015 Fifth Street

If only I’d have remembered to multiply
1015 would have made sense
no slapping high five’s, no low ball offers
just a measly little two
plus?
bedroom
a basement
with a windowless frame
minus a set of hinges on the upstairs
master bedroom
door
that
leads
to nowhere but trouble
times
gang
symbols
written in Revlon’s
Holiday Splendor
empty smudged bottles resting on the window sill
and ouch
a bullet
buried
in the floor carpet right next to
a glass earring, pierced and stained with
teenage blood.
This house isn’t the way I remember it
with the party line stuck to my ear
hanging from the kitchen wall where the
ticking
clock
carried
from Denmark and proudly hung
on the wall of the property owned
at
1015
displays
the time
of decades past
with shiny red linoleum flooring and counter tops
the color of cherry Popsicle’s
but the cherry stain rubs the carpet in the other room now
does that count for something?
Oh, hang your hat elsewhere or you will
become the mistress to a master’s
bedroom of
endless
renovation.

A Less Than Purple Passage

My son is excited
for an eleventh grader
this is big
for him this is monumental
He is ordinarily stoic
and always in command
of his emotions

What’s this excitement about,
I ask with sincere anticipation

I’ve been accepted to Annapolis’
summer naval academy program, he answers, eyes averted

He’s pivoting with pride, delight, puritanism
at its finest. All those years I spoke out against
militarism, served on the steering committee for WAMM
reminding him that his uncle would have gone to Canada
instead of serving in Viet Nam,
reminding him that his grandfather
received a purple heart in WWII
and never let go of the nightmares
to follow him into death
at too young an age
a saddened heart
broken from bloodshed
while less than a purple passage
remains
next to a flag folded to precision
in the shape of a dagger

I want to scream from
the battlefield right out our front door
War is right here among us
Annapolis is not privy
to my eleventh grader
all the while he
the one with diverted eyes
remains in command

Peat Moss For the Soul

I sat waiting for adoption
a silenced relic in a contemporary world
dated 1956 inside a pelt of pale ecru
like a skin graft donor
a first edition
fees pending
minus a Catholic discount
no tax on wearable items

Life takes hold and I find a home and a way
where I plant myself for almost five decades.

I read, I write, I contemplate life and one day
there it sits, waiting to be adopted
a silent relic in a contemporary book bin
dated 1924 inside its green cover
like sod rooting into the earth
a first edition copy of
The New Spoon River
for a dollar
minus my 10 percent discount
brings it to a grand total of
ninety-six cents
with tax, a new millennium addendum.

Life takes hold and Claud Antle, Edith Bell,
Emerson Clingman and Wayland Reed find a home
and a way to be unsilenced perched within the hands
of this aging reader.

Spinning

I work for a living.
I know right from wrong.
I know the sun sets in the same direction.
I know the Earth is round.
I know my favorite socks are blue and thin around the toe tips.
I know I am not hungry but
I am tired,
I know one animal is sick and the other two seem
okay, for now.
I know I like pasta
not over cooked and room temperature.
I know I can follow direction.
But I can still get lost.

I can color the picture
but not draw the detail.
I can read the lyrics but not
sing the song.
I can row the boat but not
tie it to the tree.
I can sleep while standing but
not in peace.
I can wake up cold but
not feel the draft.
I can say I’m sorry but
I won’t.
I won’t mean it if I say it.

I won’t call someone in the
middle of the night.
I won’t share my chips.
I won’t ask personal questions.
I won’t tell details.
I won’t write your story
or drink your coffee.
I won’t try religion
on for size.
It will not fit.
I will not fit.

I will not talk about centipedes
I will not step on anthills.
I will not step on a crack
or pull the weeds out of one.
I will not drive to Detroit.
I will not live on a commune
or take communion
or eat fish on Fridays.
I cannot eat fish
or follow ritual even with direction.
I cannot live off vegetables
even with spices or oils or
cooked.
I cannot talk randomly
to Gods or ministers.
I cannot eat foul unless
I have vegetables
cooked.
Luke warm left crunchy
left over.
I can’t throw them away.

I can’t ride a unicycle.
I can’t read upside down.
I can’t read out loud.
I can’t wear high shoes
that are white or pink
or yellow.
I need shoes to fit
I need shelter
I need time alone.
I need it to rain
and snow to spin
and the threat of tornadoes
and tomatoes but not potatoes
on Sunday or any day
of the week.
I need to follow direction
in order to get somewhere.
I need direction.
I need a wife.

Cool Dead People

Endorsements for Cool Dead People Essays

If I did not know Suzanne Nielsen, my life would have been very dull. Suzanne and I were founding staff writers for Double Dare Press magazine. Her twist on the standard obituary, Cool Dead People became the most popular page on our Web site. It is a blend of memoir and homage sprinkled with humor. Each tale is driven the authentic desire for us to remember people in all of their complexity. These amazing essays examine the lives of artists and thinkers who have fallen to the cultural wayside. Her words become their breath, and they live again. –M. Laurel WalshS h h h . . . . .Here Comes Mabel, The Queen of spontaneity!Naturalness is the most important element in acting. To develop naturalness you must develop understanding of human nature. You must be able to determine just what a certain type of person would do in a certain situation. —Mabel NormandAs I sit down to write this, I have the radio on in the background, no music plays but I am tap tap tapping away regardless. An invisible voice tells me that Caroline Knapp, the author of Drinking: A Love Story, died yesterday at 42 from lung cancer. What is it with so many cool dead people dying so young? And of lung cancer, not what I need to hear as I sit puffing on my Marlboro Light after quitting for five months. Addictions are forever scheming, smarmy devotees, which is why it’s so hard to say goodbye to them. Although I’ve given up the booze and chemicals, I still am leery of the abstemious individual who’s never known what it’s like to soak in oblivion. I would never have been leery of Mabel Normand, except she might have pinched from my stash had we hung together.Normand was swinging even before Chick, her prime lasting over a decade, from 1914-1928. She was born on November 9th, 1892. I would bet her mother didn’t experience the same type of childbirth I did on that same day a century later. But I have a feeling both our babies were pistols, born with fiery laughter in their eyes from the minute they left that dark, suffocating channel.Normand left home at the age of 14 to become a model for ads. She worked with several artists and this enhanced her longing to become an artist herself. Soon after working her way into the media circuit, she hooked up with film personalities like Mack Sennett and Sam Goldwyn and should I say the rest is just trite history? No, because nothing was trite about Normand. Encouraged to move into silent films, she hesitated for several months before moving on to become the greatest slapstick comedienne ever.She really wanted to paint. “The men I worked with helped me, and while of course I’ve never done anything with it, I learned enough about painting to do vignettes in my own books and to do water colors on the programs and guest cards for my friends when they give parties,” she stated during an interview.And party she did, with the best of them: Pickford, Chaplin, Arbuckle, the Gish sisters, Valentino, among many others. It was actually after a party she had one night in her home that she decided to marry one of her leading men, Lew Cody. Cody asked Normand to marry him and she said that they needed to do it right away if they were going to do it at all. So, the queen of spontaneity jumped in the car with Cody and two friends for witnesses, drove several hours to Ventura County, awoke the county judge and had the ceremony in his living room while his family peered through the keyhole. Normand had never thought seriously of marrying anyone up to this point, even though many, including Chaplin, Sennett and Goldwyn wanted her as a life-long partner. Cody won her heart with his constant friendship and spontaneous sense of humor.Normand, known as the female Charlie Chaplin but without a doubt much cooler, made 11 films with Chaplin. It was after Chaplin worked with Normand that he decided he wanted to make a career in films. He felt compelled to work with Normand. Everyone she worked with fell in love with her charm, talent and gusto for life. Passion can bring out the worst and best in people. In Normand’s case, it brought out the best. Once while breaking for lunch, a prop man tried to make a pass at Normand. She picked up a blueberry pie and threw it in his face; henceforth the genesis of the pie-in-the-face humor. Normand used this spontaneous reaction in many films and she was the first of the slapsticks to take it in the face, so to speak. Part of what made Normand so funny was that she was willing to do just about anything, never using a double for any of her stunts.For a while she used the name Muriel Fortesque because she was forced to keep her anonymity as a screen performer. This was short-lived as Normand couldn’t and wouldn’t be forced into anything, especially anonymity.After watching several of Normand’s films, I am left with this feeling: she was too smart, too witty and too spontaneous to have been openly admired for all her talent. Because she hated convention and conformity, she was known towards the end of her career as an “outlaw at heart,” by those who loved her and a scandalous vixen by those who she outshone. In spite of the fact she was known in Hollywood as being incredibly kind and generous, the ink tried to defame her by claiming she was a cocaine addict and a heathen. They even wrote about her abortion with Sam Goldwyn. Come on, why wouldn’t any woman in her right mind abort a Goldwyn fetus? Also, she treaded dark waters when her friend, William Taylor, was mysteriously murdered. Normand was the last person to have seen him alive. The tabloids tried to make a case of her involvement with foul play.Any person with the well-earned cinematic chutzpah of Mabel Normand would tread shadowed waters before their time was up, our envious society sees to that. One remark Normand made to Alla Nazimova during a visit was “I have often been alone, felt alone, when surrounded by the thickest crowds.” Even the fearless suffer from social envy.So scandals were created, unkind words were spoken and movies moved in the same direction. The silent screen became chatty. Normand sought out voice lessons from Nazimova, as she felt uncomfortable with her voice. She had been silent for so long, she was convinced that her throaty tones wouldn’t be accepted. This was the beginning of the end for Normand. Nazimova and Normand met on several occasions at Nazimova’s home with the intent on working toward conformity with Normand’s voice, but instead they decided to have bitch sessions and confided in each other, building a lasting friendship until Normand’s death in 1930. Part of Normand’s throaty tone was connected to her chronic pneumonia, which later led to tuberculosis and eventually killed her. Her decaying lungs may have been drug related, maybe nicotine, a vice she could have been in control of but dammit, there’s that addiction stuff again, our spontaneous long-time vernaculars. Our devotees……And there’s that lung stuff again. Mabel’s lungs gave out; Caroline’s lungs did the same. Stevie’s raspy-throated tones began to sound more and more like munchkin sounds after her too many snootfuls of cocaine, although her lungs appear to still be in tact. Nevertheless, these women either found or lost their voice, their backdrop to visibility through verbiage or silence.Don’t you think that some “dead” folks are really just hovering around, dying to get the last word in? Normand died at 37. No way did she say everything that needed to be said before her last curtain call. So people write her biography, Stevie Nicks writes and sings a song about her, I write this little ditty… for what? I guess to get our version of her last words in, our version of a cool dead person who died way before her time.So Caroline Knapp, rest in peace with Mabel, with Chick and Chuck, Taylor, Tommy and Theodora and the queen of filth, Ms. Massey. I read your drunk-alogue and related through every chapter, as I’m sure Mabel would have. You’re another woman who broke the silence in a world of addictive spontaneity.The radio is still yapping and my foot is still tapping; the invisible never silenced, the silenced never invisible.Joe Orton: Joe Orton: Cleansed or Condemned by Maniacal Rage…Cleanse my heart, give me the ability to rage correctly. —Joe OrtonWhen you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs as you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking. When you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock-to the hard of hearing you shout and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures. —Flannery O’ConnorI’m an acquired taste. That’s a double entendre if there ever was one. The public will accept me. They’ve already given me a licence, you see. What they’ll do is say, ‘Joe Orton can do these things because he’s a success,’ but I’m a success because I’ve taken a hatchet to them and hacked my way in. —Joe Orton, 1967When my son was three, maybe closer to four, I took him to the library for his first uncensored literary pick. He thought he’d died and gone to book heaven. Of course he only wanted books he couldn’t reach, and he had a terrible time understanding the concept of borrowing versus keeping. Three weeks at home seemed more in the line of keeping to him than borrowing. Needless to say, the concept took years for him to foster and library fines grew like weeds in our gutters. One night when my tap tap tapping wouldn’t bring forth sleep, I rearranged the living room, cleaned out my closet and then went to work on the bathroom closet. There, stashed between two frayed bath towels was a library book we’d checked out much beyond the three-week limit. Murmuring under my breath, I took the book into my son’s room, flipped on the light and said, “okay, Mister, explain this one.” He took the book in his hands, all the while in a blur and said, “Mom, I did this when I was just a little kid, give me a break.” With that, he tossed the book to the floor, pulled his blanket over his head and he was out. I picked up the book, looked inside and realized what he was referring to. He’d written the word “poop” in brown magic marker on almost every page. Some pages had his artistic rendition of little poops piling on top of one another, making a big shitty mess, clearly identifiable by the standards of most mothers’ of young boys. Why is it boys are so obsessed with poops? Obscenities in general?This leads me into the life of Joe Orton, our monthly cool dead person. One of the things that has interested me most about Orton was that at the age of 29, he spent six months in jail for stealing over 70 library books and fucking them up. “I did things like paste a picture of a female nude over a book of etiquette and over the picture of the author. I did other things, very strange things,” he said in an interview shortly after his release from prison. Oh god, is this what I have to look forward to? If so, I will look forward with scintillating pleasure. If my son were to do something similar with likewise motives, visits to detention centers would be well worth my while.Orton was rejected by the literary world for a long time before one of his masterpieces was finally noticed as such. As a result of the continued rejection, Orton and his partner in crime, Ken Halliwell, watched people react to their little works of art. “I used to stand in corners after I’d smuggled the doctored books back into the library and then watch the people read them. It was very funny and interesting,” Orton revealed in his diaries that were given to John Lahr years later. Lahr wrote a stunning biography titled Prick Up Your Ears and it is through this biography that we truly get to know Joe Orton for who he was.Orton was 17 when he met Ken Halliwell in 1950 at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Halliwell, eight years Orton’s senior, was a frustrated, unpublished and unagented novelist, who connected immediately to Orton’s need of detachment and his desire to also write novels. The two moved in together and set up house so to speak, with Halliwell engaging in the roll of dutiful housewife all the while Orton’s success took hold and won him various awards until a brutal ending which came about in 1967. In ‘67, Halliwell took a hammer to Orton’s head while he was sleeping, pounded his skull to death, and then killed himself with an overdose. The only hint of reason was a note left by Halliwell, which read, “If you read his diary all will be explained. KH P.S. Especially the latter part.”Orton and Halliwell were both determined to get their work into print as well as make a statement. The hilarious library fiasco was one way of doing so until 1963 when Orton’s play, Entertaining Mr. Sloane, made him a well-known playwright, and four years later had earned him international recognition. Halliwell believed that he taught Orton everything that he knew as far as writing, the arts and etiquette. Orton believed that his stint in jail is what brought him his most self-learned advancement with the literary arts. Up until that time, Orton claimed he was very involved in his work but the jail time had gained him enough detachment in his writing that public reaction and outcome no longer mattered. In the end, it was his detachment from Halliwell that hit him in the face.However, many people, including Orton’s agent felt that his ability to detach is what brought about his success and curbed his angst. Orton had gone from being angry at the critics of the world to truly believing his own words when he said that, “Words were more effective than actions; in the right hands verbs and nouns could create panic,” because panic is what he created among the meek, all the while inheriting the Earth.As time went on, Orton’s spontaneity grew with his character surprises and his unrelenting works to shock the world. I have to think that John Waters learned something from his predecessors like Orton. Waters came to the scene almost two decades behind Orton, creating the glorious Pink Flamingos where Divine eats doggy doo. Although some people think Waters made Divine eat shit, we all know that Divine himself chose such a stunt, with no stand-in. As Divine and Orton both knew, we’ve all eaten shit at some point or another without even realizing it. What better than to be spontaneous about it? Some say phooey to spontaneity. Look at Ken Halliwell’s gorey indulgence in being spontaneous. I don’t think for one minute Halliwell’s hammer was spontaneously situated. He carried a grudge for Orton’s success, feeling unnoticed by Orton himself. Halliwell never detached from his own despondency and in the end, he got even for the pain, condemning instead of cleansing Orton in a maniacal blood bath.What comes first for us, the detachment or the success? I would have to think that both are equally important to the others existence. In Orton’s case, detachment made room for Orton’s success. I’ve been detached for years; I’m still waiting for success. Then again, I get to do this column going on its second year for Double Dare Press, interacting with all of you…now that’s success. We’re read worldwide, we’re understood in ways that we’ve never been understood or even heard before. I’ve eaten my fare share of shit during this lifetime, how about you?Let’s continue to explore such wonders of life together, let’s dig up the graveyard of tabooed areas and public opinion regarding all these unleashed dead, and the future cool dead people of the world. Let’s continue to uncover succes d’estime and rally in succes fou. This has been an incredible year for Double Dare Press, we’ve set aside taboos by bringing our dead back to life, something conformists might like to ignore.Per Bob Hope, thanks for the memories, thanks for reading Double Dare and I extend a worshipful gesture to M. Laurel Walsh. Keep up the great work, Lovey. By the way, what do you think of the detachment theory? I’m flying off now on my big turd, hovering over the twin cities and rousting some live spirits to come out and make me laugh. I guess I’d have to agree with Orton; “I suppose I’m a believer in Original Sin. People are profoundly bad, but irresistibly funny.” Until next month, keep seeing dead people.Bruce Chatwin: He’s A Real Nomad ManYou must remember that I shall be a nomad, more or less, until my days are done.–Robert Louis StevensonAll our activities are linked to the idea of journeys. Nomads survive because they have an irreverent and timeless vitality.–Bruce Chatwin”Symbolism is our friend, an extension of our fictional and non-fictional literary imagination,” said the great Ms. Kaiser, my ninth grade English/Social Studies teacher. Nell Kaiser was a first year teacher, an East St. Paul girl who went on to college and decided to dedicate her life to teaching others from her neck of the woods. She was also my homeroom teacher. Our classroom was in a portable, a building on school grounds but not connected to the school, built of plywood and indoor/outdoor carpeting to house the overcrowded junior high students. Nell had a stereo in the portable, freedom posters, and lots of ironic symbolism. Mind you, this was 1971. The Beatles were symbolizing all there was to symbolize with Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and OD’s were rampant as a symbol of the need of a hallucinatory world.Our portable had no windows, but it had one door that could be locked from both the inside and outside. One morning in February, I still remember it as being a Wednesday, the students meandered into homeroom only to find Ms. Kaiser standing in the front of the room, her back to us, and the room ransacked. Empty cans were tossed about freely and the room smelled of sour 3.2 beer and pot. The stereo was missing, as well as all the posters and symbolic items that we’d become ‘one’ with over the course of the year. “This violation is a symbol of feeling closed off and not welcome to our class,” Ms. Kaiser said when she’d finally composed herself to face us. “If only we’d have had windows,” she said, “then the people who did this would have seen we had nothing to hide.”I wonder if she was that much like Mother Teresa, or if she really wanted to clobber the jerks that stole from her. Maybe she believed that people who lived in glass houses wouldn’t get stones thrown their way. In retrospect, I would have to say that Nell Kaiser was gifted with a keen eye for the world of symbolism, and as a result maybe she did have windows into others’ hidden and pained interiors.I go back in time to this scenario when I think of the Englishman, Bruce Chatwin, the great-grandson of an architect who designed churches, banks, bridges and a palace for a maharajah, all made of glass. Chatwin himself studied architecture early in his life and befriended the architect, Eileen Gray, who happened to have been friends with Natalie Barney (Small world, isn’t it?). After studying architecture, Chatwin went to work at Sotheby’s for seven years, moving from the position of archivist to director. This was Chatwin’s longest held position; he was a compulsive mover.Chatwin, born May 13,1940, in Sheffield, England, published six books during his life. Most of his writing was categorically labeled “travel writing,” but he hated to be characterized as such. “It always irritated me to be called a travel writer,” he said in an interview with Susannah Clapp, author of the inspiring book, With Chatwin. Chatwin’s travels brought him to the most fantastical realms. He had no interest in journeying to ordinary places or writing sightseeing guides. He traveled to places like Patagonia, vast open horizons where windows weren’t needed. His travels to the ends of the earth were ways for him to escape censure and status quo, among other things; these were demons that tried throughout his forty-some years to take control of existence. He fought the battle of submission by immersing in self-made paths to “explore not a place but an idea: nomadism.”Chatwin believed that nomadism had been in our DNA from the beginning of time. “We are instinctively restless,” he said. This is where he resembles Robert Louis Stevenson. Both men were nomads. Both wrote about their travels with a sense of romance. Neither was overtaken by possessions. Both men died in their forties with shades pulled shut on the windows into their souls.Writer Salmon Rushdie, a friend of Chatwin’s, said that although he highly admired Chatwin’s work, Chatwin withheld much of himself in his writing; “The whole person he was when you met him.” He attributed this to a life of secrets. Other friends were confused by Chatwin, ‘the person.’ Some said he was too elusive, others said he was too much. As a writer, he was mostly thought of as walking a fine line between fiction and truth.As I read Chatwin’s work, I am once again reminded of how there is nothing more truthful than fiction. Chatwin himself said, “The word ’story’ is intended to alert the reader to the fact that, however closely the narrative may fit the facts, the fictional process has been at work.” An eye for narrative and an eye for drama are what make for great story telling. Because Chatwin had his eyes constantly open to the extraordinary, he could take us to places in his writing that we’ve never been, seeing through language and symbolism.The more I read about Bruce Chatwin, the more I am flashing back to Peter Carey’s story of Oscar and Lucinda. Lucinda is fascinated with glass. Oscar hated limitless expanses. They took a gamble and built a structure framed in iron, boxed in glass. The entire expanse was one huge window to the worlds around them. It was a fascinatingly symbolic structure that represented solitude, enclosure and exposure; this is a unifying theme in all of Chatwin’s writing and in his life.Chatwin befriended the artist, Joseph Cornell, who made hundreds of glass-fronted boxes where micro-worlds existed, little windows into his various worlds of obsessions. Before Cornell’s death in 1970, Chatwin had him make a box, representative of the author’s life. The box, fronted in glass, was left empty.As we know about Bruce Chatwin, we know very little about what truly touched his soul. Chatwin was a detailed writer, he could impress crowds of people with his effervescent personality when talking about his delicious travels, and he loved beautiful people, art, literature, and his wife. He loved the idea of nomadism and the freedom to call himself a nomad man. He died a sad and secretive death of AIDS in 1989. His wife was with him.Maybe Chatwin lifted his shades for his wife. There was something that he showed her to make her believe that “all his geese were swans.” There was more to the man than a lost horizon. I hope to someday meet up with Elizabeth Chanler, the wife of Bruce Chatwin. Her own artistic abilities and impressions of this artist’s life might vary; then again, she might think all that could be captured was captured. I reckon she would say that although his horizons were limitless on his solitude ventures, his shades were drawn to the windows of his personal life.As for Oscar and Lucinda, their structure collapsed, their load needed lightening. As for Nell Kaiser’s realm of “trust everyone,” she might have stuck with Morse code as a dedication to symbolism. As for Joshua Slocum, the first man to sail around the world alone, his whereabouts remains a mystery. I loved the little ditty of information Clapp gave her reader: the “first grown-up book [Chatwin] read from cover to cover was Joshua Slocum’s Sailing Around The World Alone.”Solitude was an important part of Chatwin’s existence. Solitude and remembrance. As I come to the end of this essay, I am tap-tap-tapping to the song by the Beatles playing in my head, changing some of the words ever so slightly;He’s a real nomad man, sitting in his nomad land, thinking up his nomad plans for nobody.Doesn’t have a point of view, knows not where he’s going to, Isn’t he a bit like you and me?Thanks, Bruce, for mixing fact with fiction and having the nerve to print it as faction (otherwise known as travel writing). Thanks for your reverence for art and the unknown. Thanks for your secrets behind the shades, as well as what you depth hidden behind glass. In the end, it all must have seemed like a hallucinatory blur, I’m sure, as well as it did with Stevenson. He died of tuberculosis, the disease of his day. I am sorry that AIDS was to remain unknown, yet on one level you must have known it was nothing to hide. Your square on the quilt is securely fastened, hidden behind glass and your shades remain at half-mast.

I Thought You Should Know

Endorsement for ITYSK

Suzanne Nielsen speaks to me from the America that I do not work for; the America that doesn’t intimidate me. Her poems, barely grammatical, are disturbing collages of monotony and irony from a country that has suddenly realized things have slipped out of control. Take, “3.14159″, for example, where the day begins with a cup of coffee, more coffee and “watching static,” and comes to a close “sitting in the center of room and waiting for an impression.” It is this monotony that recurs in poems like “1861 to 1864″ and “Pre-nuptials” revealing the disturbing dimensions of a world where “nome de plumes exist for a reason on the Internet; nobody is left responsible.” Responsible for genocides, famines, bomb explosions that leave hundreds dead in a split second.

In a way, as I see tall skyscrapers rise in my country on what was farmland a few years ago, her voice seems prophetic to me. We’re running and running hard to get somewhere, not sure whether the journey is worth it in the end.

I Thought You Should Know is a powerful book and Suzanne, one of the few American poets that I connect with immediately. Which is probably a testimony to the global relevance of her work.
- Samartha Vashishtha

Preface by Susan Williams

I don’t know if Suzanne Nielsen is semi-literate or a freaking genius, or if one blots out the other. Most days she doesn’t know a plural from a possessive. She’s hazy on subject-verb agreement and homonyms are not her strong suit, though I suppose it could “reign and thunder” in a poet’s world. I suppose a poet could “break” as well as “brake” for geese.
As in her first collection, “East of the River,” Nielsen pokes holes in pretense, fastens on the hilarious failure. Her characters–Gloria LaVon, Cherrie Winthrop, Angel Olson, Theo Fearling, and my favorite, Big Bertha–hang out at rummage sales, Foodtown, the Lava Lounge, a double wide Airstream. They are borderline freaks, a cast inspired by Edgar Lee Masters as well as the East St. Paul neighborhood Nielsen grew up in.

“I Thought You Should Know” is prefaced with an Oscar Wilde quotation: “We should treat all trivial things very seriously, and all serious things in life with sincere and studied triviality.” The line between serious and trivial blurs in this collection, or maybe it is more accurate to say there are no trivial lives here. Wandering, smoking, watching TV, bidding on EBay, reading the obits or getting baptized, these people reel you in. The seemingly trivial is the stuff of journal entries; the poet brings control. The best poems in “I Thought” walk the line between control and spontaneity. Nielsen’s gift lies in storytelling, in bringing an untidy life to life with a few strokes, in perceiving the hidden web beneath the ordinary. In diving so seamlessly into a mind that the water does not ripple.

Sampling from ITYSH

Coverage in America

Theo Fearling walked uneven on the perfected pavement. He wasn’t inebriated; he was a half inch off on the left leg, just enough to cause a slight disturbance in his gait. To justify this impurity Theo went to work for Ringling Brothers as a handstand artist while performing ballet movements that he called “poetry among limbs.” He eventually lost his ability to stand upside down and succumbed to lyrics. Today Theo owns a second-rate scooter that his insurance declined to pay for, and he lives in debt like the purest of Americans with the thought of hiring an insurance adjuster.

Freeze Frame

How many mornings
has the sky warned me
to carry an umbrella
So I married a man
who’d never owned
an umbrella
He’d never owned
a camera…of course
I didn’t know this
when I met him
I didn’t know this
until four years later
when we were arguing
about the foreboding sky
The sky too gives warnings,
I said. He just looked at me
and reached up, grabbed a piece
of that sky and said
this is how close we are to illusions
and this is why I will never
own a camera, an umbrella;
this is why, my dear wife,
meteorological observations
are negatives in a captured frame
that make the sky want to cry.

Introducing Miss Aries

Tonight in the Lava Lounge Miss Aries turns up the heat
All the while spit curls hold a pose,
breathe through your nothse and look me in the eye,
that’s right look me in the eye,
she warns as those who remain unaffected by the pressure
gasp and wonder whose child is this
that holds every hair in place and carries a lisp?

Storm Drain

She said she walked away due to dorm strain
that resulted in irreconcilable differences
and
to
make
matters
worse
the drain in the back closet
that was once a bathroom
backed up and caused chaos throughout the two-story
to
include
blamingshamingstaining
so much so that the elders upstairs
prayed
for
it
to
rain
upon which the sky opened to let the storm drain.

The Day Cherrie Winthrop was Born Again

Cherrie Winthrop decided at the height of menopause
What she really needed was total immersion of the Holy Spirit.
At River’s Trust Baptist Church one
Palm Sunday morning she would take the plunge.

She’d prayed about her fear of water at previous dusk
but fear still dampened her face and made her palms slippery.
By dawn day of, Cherrie dug out of her closet
her favorite Cleo sling backs, metallic white to match her gown.

At 10:00 a.m. Monica Connelly sat at the organ playing
“Nearer, My God, to Thee” as Cherrie’s cue.
The fishing sinkers she’d slipped inside the hem
of her white gown were intended to weigh it down.

Alta Latessa’s baptism last month previewed Fruit of the Looms because she hadn’t thought of sinkers. In addition Alta lost her footing on the third stair so at the last minute Cherrie superglued the Cleos to the soles of her feet. Alta would be in the
congregation, most likely in the front pew.

At 10:10 a.m. Cherrie embarked on her journey down the six steps
into the pool of water; her gown obeyed, and a cloth was placed over her face
while she was immersed. When Cherrie rose again, her waterproof makeup remained in place; a miracle second only to her second chance at life.

Translocation

Geese were about yesterday for within two miles
I’d counted 17, a group of eight flying in an almost uniform V
a group of five flying in a row, four more following behind
at different speeds. One in the road flattened
with its wing perched up toward the sky.

Later that evening I am standing in line outside
a theatre thinking about smoking when a student I’d
had in a writing class approaches me. I hadn’t seen her
in many years. Names don’t always come to me, but if I think back
to what someone has written I can usually recall the name,
such was the case.
I asked if she was still writing.
I told her she looked happy.
She told me two weeks earlier she’d had surgery.
Her partner needed a kidney and hers matched perfectly.
Two weeks ago? I said. And look at you, who would know?
Our eyes locked, and for a brief moment I saw in the reflection of her
eyeglasses my new haircut, in the shape of a kidney.

You saved your partner’s life, I said, drifting back to the street
back into the evening chill and the hum of the traffic.
Oh no, she said. He saved mine when he encouraged me to write.
Off she walked, but as I watched I saw her wings spread and take flight.

I Thought You Should Know

You want to hear a funny story? This really happened to me. Once I went to Bayfield Wisconsin and I stayed at this bed and breakfast place. That afternoon I went to a flea market and bought a bunch of old signs, all in the shape of hexagons. I brought them back to my room at the B & B and set them on the ledge on the wainscoting so I could look at them all. A bellhop came and rang my door. This was a real nice place. All decorated fancy schmancy. When I went to answer the door the bellhop came in and looked around like he was in the wrong room. Isn’t that a funny story? I just remembered it. I thought you should know.

Bending Spoons: A Leap of Faith

Bending Spoons: A Leap of Faith

Synopsis

Spoon River was my introduction to Edgar Lee Masters as a poet. I picked up a first edition copy at Half Price Books for a dollar several years ago and I still revisit it almost daily. Bending Spoons: A Leap of Faith, started as a New Year’s resolution, an homage to Masters. The “leap” represented leap year (sort of); bending spoons is a metaphor for how I interweave narratives by writing a poem a day and revisiting each of the characters throughout the year. Initially I worked with the title of “The Promise of a New Poem,” a knock-off of The Promise of a New Day by Karen Casey and Martha Vanceburg. Their book of daily inspirations was my starting point for each poem. However after careful thought, starting the collection with Bending Spoons seemed more appropriate, as the characters are bending the ears of the reader continuously.
Although these characters do not visit the reader from their graves as Masters’ characters do in Spoon River, they are members of a (dys)functional community that speak of the (dis)trust and irony we face on a daily basis. I believe some of the characters are descendants to some of the people buried in Petersburg, IL.

Poem Sampling:

The Stillness of Sage

Melody burnt sage over the 38 foot Indian
and blew kisses to Sir Elton John after cutting
off her tail in the dead of winter, burying it
under the packed snow on top of the mounds
then bled to death with a smile on her face.

Complimentary Guides

Marie DDS, after a long drought, felt hopeful
about the new America noting that Hilary serving
as Secretary of State would not only reign on the
Republicans parade, but threaten severe wind damage,
along with Al Franken being appointed Ambassador to Israel
indefinitely.

Fostering the Fundamental

Marianna’s memorial was held today,
as she was Wednesday’s Child.
Al and Amy were in attendance
as Norm baked himself at Sungods
in Singapore. Buzz Potter’s widow
made an appearance, and graciously
sprinkled a few of Buzz’s ashes into
the fountain made of granite that the FDA
workers donated in Marianna’s remembrance.
All in all Father Turin delivered a thoughtful message
and just as he was about to finish a train whistle blew
off in the distance to the tune of Edelweiss.

The Serenity Prayer

Clovis Sweeney accepted the fact that she was born
a hermaphrodite. It didn’t take Madame Luigi to break the news;
Clovis knew the day she visited Parson’s farm and later lifted her leg
Mel Gibson at the only theater in town. Why was Mel there? some may wonder;
but this is Clovis’ story, this is Clovis’ serenity, and Mel was only there
to deliver a bouquet of Leontopodium alpinum and admit his wrong doing,
all in the name of the fifth step.

Plucking Thorns

Reverend Timothy Baaken returned to the watering hole
to collect sturgeon whiskers before the ice set in.
At the end of the day he had only samples of 22 of the 23
species, but he felt blessed in spite of this for the pontifical
purple sturgeon made his last appearance right before
Baaken went under to swim with the school around the bend.

Positions of Prominence

Mother Teresa, Jesse and Terry Ventura,
Diane Varsi, Judy Garland and Carl Rove
all participated in the Christmas pageant at
Salem Baptist. There was a debate that resulted
in an argument where a handgun was confiscated.
The argument entailed who was to play the king
carrying the Bush Bobblehead. In the end Rove won,
because he was most like Herod.

Tied Closely to Triumph

Carolyn wore the badge of honor as most significant shopper
while Mrs. Claus recruited Officer Voeller to fill in for Crumpet
at the workshop. Voeller vicariously accepted the challenge
so Carolyn buried the blowup doll that resembled the officer
under the porch at the Claus residence. Carolyn soon started
her own television show and pen-palled with Petter who was
now referred to as inmate #638291.

Distracted by Setbacks

Mother on the go stopped going
when Larry King Live refused her
request to be on his show with Sarah Palin.
Sarah Palin needed advice on hair care, and
Mother-going-nowhere had just the right prescription.

Like a Magnet

Moretta Meineke’s last supper consisted of
six pudding choices. Meineke managed to make
a mess of things by using her spoon as a weapon,
flinging pudding off its indentation at the cardinal family
eating in a mannerly way just outside her kitchen window.
Later that evening Meineke was sequestered to solitary
confinement where she used that same spoon to take her life.

The Perfect Form of the Circle

Ernest Revue used Major Barbara’s acronym
in a slightly dyslexic fashion. Although the acronym
originally read MOM, a representation of Most Opportunistic
Major, Revue gallantly transferred the lettering in his own mind
to mean Worst Officer Warranted, representing the acronym WOW.

The Moon Behind the 8-Ball & Other Stories

Endorsements for The Moon Behind the 8 Ball & Other Stories

Suzanne Nielsen’s The Moon Behind the 8 Ball & Other Stories offers up entrée upon entrée of what we need most: the scarred, both spiritually and physically; the arsonist, real and should-be; sane human beings puzzled by the irrational actions and inactions of misguided Republican-voting robots; state fair barkers; mothers of filthy children; the psychic believer and the psychically-challenged. Her short-short stories plunk characters down in the very middle of in medias res. They land on their feet, look both ways, and decide quickly which direction to trudge onward. In short, these stories are an existentialist’s delight.

—George Singleton, author of These People Are Us

Suzanne Nielsen’s collection, The Moon Behind the 8 Ball
& Other Stories, clearly exhibits the author’s mastery
of the first person narrator. In these memorable
works of flash/short fiction, voices reverberate, enter the
dream world, bury under the skin. Nielsen lends a
poetic eye to the form of fiction: This is a
collection that offers the reader both unsettling and
lyrical glimpses of anxiety, love, and innocence.
Like Muhammad Ali, Nielsen’s fiction floats like a
butterfly, stings like a bee.

—Nathan Leslie, The fiction editor of the Pedestal Magazine, Nathan
Leslie is the author of A Cold Glass of Milk, Rants
and Raves, Drivers, and Reverse Negative.

The Moon Behind the 8-Ball

He read the note, folded it, and edged it into the gutter. That afternoon Len Garman loaded his wife’s Leopard-skinned backpack full of all he needed, an extra pair of jeans, a black faded Pink Floyd t-shirt, one pair of torn tennis (he referred to as air conditioned) and three pairs of socks. At the last minute, he tossed in the magic 8-Ball his kids gave him for his birthday. By 3:40 pm, Len was thumbing his way out of St. Paul heading east on 94.
After walking backwards for 40 minutes during rush hour, Len reached for the 8-Ball, and before he finished reading the answer to his question, a trucker pulled over to offer a ride. “Yes, in due time,” Len muttered under his breath as he ran to the cab and climbed in.
“Where you heading?” the driver asked. “Just east of Madison,” Len replied. “Got some work outside of Madison coming up?” the driver asked. “Just going to stay with an old buddy of mine for a while,” Len said. “My wife threw me out.”
The driver lit a cigarette, and exhaled slowly. “Was in Madison in ’76,” the driver said. “Picked up some hippy chick named Tia. The old lady never found out. Then I come home from being on the road six weeks and catch her in bed with my cousin. You’re better off without her, Mack,” the driver said.
“Len, my name’s Len, and I never cheated on my wife.”
Len quietly asked the 8-Ball if his chances of getting back with Meg were promising. “Very doubtful,” it read. “Why?” he asked aloud. “Are you kidding?” it responded.
“What you got there?” the driver asked. “Just a silly gadget my kids gave me. Getting pretty hard up when I start talking to magic 8-Balls, huh?”
“You gotta let her go, Lenny, cuz she’s already on the dark side of the moon, as they say.”
Only Meg called Len ‘Lenny.’ Len asked another question of the 8-Ball; “Better not tell you now,” it responded.
“Pull over here,” Len said. As he climbed out, he noticed a stuffed toy bear in the lower view window of the passenger door. A paper heart was attached to a string around its neck that read, “Sleep tight, Love,” in cursive, familiar to Len.
When the truck pulled away Len wondered how and when his replacement recognized him. Maybe it was the backpack, or the feint smell of his wife still on him from that morning before she’d tucked the note in his pants pocket.
“I should have broken his neck,” Len said. “Forget about it,” the 8-Ball responded. In due time, Len thought, as he continued east on 94. Ahead he noticed a slice of the moon in the still blue sky.
Later on that night the rain poured down; Len, holed up in a cheap motel, dreamed of paper notes damming gutters, houses sinking underground, and the dark side of the moon, now an 8-Ball, laughing manically.

Fists for Hands

I was born in the mid-fifties with fists for hands so Johnny went home and put a bullet in his head. I didn’t intend to come out looking for a fight, but I came by it honestly. Johnny was my dad and before he put the bullet through his skull, he rode the roller coaster at Excelsior. He was too afraid to let go and let God, so they say, but guns were always something he was comfortable twirling in the air. Aunt Jack said Johnny wasn’t ready to have an angry offspring and to this day she blames me for the blowout.

In 1963, I went to live with Aunt Jack permanently after my mother left town. I was just a babe in the woods, only seven years old to be exact. Mother tried to confuse my fists with a bad case of arthritis but Aunt Jack and I knew the truth. My fists were no source of deformity; they were a message from my heart that something was internally wrong with me.
I was denied so many things as a result of the fists. I couldn’t be a Cub Scout because I couldn’t straighten out my fingers to offer up a proper salute. I couldn’t hold my pencil in school; therefore I never learned to write cursive. But one thing I could do, I could throw a mean punch in any direction and this made kids run for cover.
One spring evening in St. Paul, my Aunt Jack was determined to take me to the Billy Graham tent revival at Midway stadium. Aunt Jack served coffee and cookies every Sunday after the 9:30 church service at Calvary Baptist Church on Fern Street. Aunt Jack was a large woman, with kinky, crazy red hair and a face full of freckles. During the sermon I often would play imaginary connect-the-dots with the side of her face I was forced to sit next to. One time I found a parfait glass that ran the length of her left temple, down past her ear then jutted out towards her jaw line. I envisioned it full of tapioca pudding topped with whipped crème and just as I was about to take a bite out of her chin, she grabbed hold of my fists and tore open my defense. She extended my fingers straight and the pain was unbearable. I screamed, “Jesus Christ, are you nuts?” That’s when she confirmed it with Reverend Larsen that I was one of the devil’s darlings. This was one of the reasons Aunt Jack was so insistent on getting to that revival. She thought Billy Graham could scare the devil’s hell out of me, like he did with crazy Mrs. Larsen before she took over the church.
Revivals are like county fairs, everyone from the neighborhood attends, even the town drunks like George and Charlotte. Geo and Char, as they were known in the community, used to be married to one another. They had gotten divorced and remarried other people. Char married Theo Larsen, the minister at Calgary Baptist Church and Geo married Larry Minor’s widow. Larry left Mrs. Minor a storage business in Little Canada where she and Geo stayed drunk. Char, or Mrs. “D.D.,” as she insisted being called, raised quite a scandal in the neighborhood with a crusty past that tired of shaking loose from her scrawny body. Before Reverend Larsen would marry her, he had Billy Graham lay healing hands on her at the revival in ‘57. Then Reverend Larsen baptized her in the privacy of their bathtub just three days after they were married. Why Aunt Jack told me the marriage wasn’t constipated until after that baptism, I to this day can’t figure out. That was too much information for me; something Aunt Jack always did was offer up too much confusing information for me to hold inside.The revival evening came and stayed way too long for my comfort level. Aunt Jack made me go with her to help set up metal chairs inside the tent before 8:00 am. By 10:00 am, my hands were swollen and throbbing from the repetitive movement so I thought I’d take a seat in one of the chairs close to the back of the tent and catch a breeze. No sooner did I sit my rear down, and Aunt Jack came running through the tent screaming, “Barclay, your damn mother’s downtown and wants a ticket to the revival.” My hands felt a burning that shot up my arms, straight through to my heart. My mother was downtown. Because I had no memory of her, I wouldn’t know it if she stood next to me in an empty coliseum. “What’s she come here for?” I asked Aunt Jack, and then wadded a ball of spit out the front of my mouth. It landed just to the right of my Aunt’s foot. “She’s come to watch you get the cure,” Aunt Jack said. That was the problem with being a freak of nature. People always expected you to find a miracle or have a miracle find you. “If only Barclay didn’t have those knots for hands,” meant “Barclay the freak.” There was no escaping it. The only good thing about my life was my promising future with sideshow attractions. Then again, would the fists be enough to sell tickets for fifty cents apiece? Maybe I needed some other contortion, like bound feet to really draw a crowd.

The bus arrived with Billy Graham’s crew and Billy himself. Aunt Jack was the official greeter and slipped Billy a note while she forced a bouquet of plastic roses in the arms of Mrs. Graham. Aunt Jack was in her glory. She was introducing people left and right to the Grahams. In her fury of nervousness, she introduced Mrs. “D.D.” as Dee Dee Larsen, followed up by, “oh my, I can be such a wiener schnitzel, of course you remember Dee Dee; you saved her soul back in ‘57!”

I stood off to the right of the stage and looked at every woman with suspecting eyes as they entered the tent. One of these women could be my mother. In spite of the heat, I wore what remained of my dad, his deerskin gloves, to conceal my fists. My thoughts were wild, my throat was dry and my stomach felt like heaving up balls of mangled intestines but I concealed my maniacal thoughts by stopping everyone in mid-sentence, mid-stride and holding everyone accountable for where they stood at that moment in time. Dee Dee Larsen was center stage, wearing a sneer that pierced into my Aunt’s head like a bullet never put to rest. Reverend and Mrs. Graham were caught in a trance. Aunt Jack looked spiteful and relentless while the rest of the crowd that was gathering looked captured in a frame of whimsy.

There was a faint movement coming from the heavens that grew into arched railways, dipping and diving, turning into inclines. I thought at first it was God’s stairway that he was releasing but there were no gentle steps, rather mountains and valleys. Some of the declines looked like the devil himself inspired their drops. The clouds formed an encasement with two young lovers. Their heads were blown back and the smiles on their faces were permanent, little parentheses on either side held them both in place. Yes, they were young lovers. I could tell by how their hair flew together, like the mane of a great unicorn that was determined to find its mate.

The sight was beyond magical, beyond illusion. And there I was, a young enamored child, held in between the young lovers going up and up and up the incline, reaching the top and letting go, letting god read my aunt’s plea on that little piece of paper she so delicately passed off to Mr. Graham. The three of us were one. As we let go, my fingers stretched wide open, across the vast world and I was free.